That's About -11 Degrees Celsius

So far this blog has been a meme-free environment, and curmudgeon that I am, I intend to keep it that way.

But I must confess that until I started blogging, or more precisely, until I started reading other people’s blogs, I had no idea what a meme was. This word “meme” is apparently part of the specialized blogging lingo that exists so newcomers will feel stupid. Every trade has its own esoteric terms; for example you don’t hear the word “episiotomy” much outside of your OB/Gyn crowd. But I didn’t realize that blogging was vaginal surgery, to open up the analogy further.

Anyway, for you stupid newcomers a “meme” is (for our purposes) an open-ended questionnaire that bloggers use when they want to post an entry but are too lazy think up their own topic. The meme questions are generally something like “What was the most embarrassing thing that happened to you in grade school?” or “What purple thing do you have hanging in your closet?” As you can see, the meme is something that is only interesting to the person answering the questions. You have to really like the person who’s blogging to actually struggle through reading someone else’s meme. I have never liked anyone that much.

You can also deduce that once you’ve agonized through someone else’s 300-question meme, your first thought is, “I’m going to have my revenge by filling out my own meme. That’ll teach those bastards.” This is the only explanation I have to account for the prevalence of so-called memes in the so-called blogosphere. People, have you learned nothing? Revenge is a dish best served cold. Wait a while, then make fun of people who post memes in your blog. You can actually cut and paste this entry from my blog into your own, if you’re a lazy blogger who would otherwise have made today’s entry a revenge meme but now feels too ashamed to do so.

Back in my day (yes I am old, as the word ‘curmudgeon’ implied earlier, thank you very much) our memes were simpler things and weren’t called that. In fact, I don’t think they had a name for these senseless interrogations back then. We just called them “Let’s Get High And Answer Silly Open-Ended Questions And Giggle Like Idiots Then Go Hit The Vending Machine” games. For some reason, girls liked these games much more than guys. One perennially favorite question was, “If you were a tree, what kind of tree would you be?”

What kind of tree would you be? Please. Girls, frivolous creatures that they are, would always wax rhapsodical and answer things like “I’d be a twisted pine tree on the side of a cliff by the sea, with the wind continually blowing through my hair.” You knew they really meant “a twisted pine tree with bigger tits” but generally you didn’t say this if you knew what was good for you. Me? I quickly developed a stock answer to this lame question that served me well then and continues to do so today: “I’d be a shady oak in a nudist colony.”

Here we’re going to take a sharp 360-degree turn (as an old girlfriend used to say) and go back to the phrase I used earlier, “wax rhapsodical.” This phrase, as used in context, means that the young woman in question became giddy with envisioned romantic images, which is just what you want if you are a guy and have gotten high with her. It is very different from the phrase “wax rhapsodically,” which my spell-checker primly informed me was the correct usage. “Waxing rhapsodically” means that one is gleefully waxing oneself. In my experience, this almost never happens. Usually there’s screaming involved.

I know about waxing from a couple different perspectives. One of these is Hulles as waxer extraordinaire. I discovered with one ex-wife who shall remain nameless (Carmen, you can thank me privately later) that waxing as a couple can be a very sensuous process. At least for the guy, assuming the woman is the waxee.

Gentlemen, if you’ve never done this with your significant other I recommend it highly. Here’s how it works: your darling dream rabbit goes to Walgreen’s and buys a Marquise¹ de Sade Waxing Kit, which consists of beeswax, some flat sticks that look like tongue depressors, and a small leatherette mask. You melt the wax, don the mask, smear the hot wax on her legs (or wherever) with the sticks, let it cool, then rip it off along with the unsightly body hair. I was informed repeatedly that you have to do it quickly. I pass that along without comment -- you decide for yourself what you need to do. Also, the wax should be hot enough so you get two decent screams out of her, one when you apply it and one when you rip it off. I would occasionally find myself muttering while I did it:

“And that’s for vacuuming during the Super Bowl.”

“Ow, do it quickly!”

“And that’s for making me go to Sak’s with you to buy that new outfit.”

“Yeeow, quickly I said!”

“And that’s....”

You get the idea. As I said, it’s a very sensuous process. For the guy.

I also know about waxing from being the waxee myself. As a gentleman of a certain age, I seem to have gained a propensity to grow hair every place on my body except for the top of my head. I personally find the wispy hair shit that grows on my back, shoulders and tattoos very unappealing from an aesthetic point of view. So, it seems, do my lovers: “Eeuw, remind me never to go hottubbing with you in public where my girlfriends can see you. Want me to wax that for you? Heh heh.”

Wise man that I am, I never give them the opportunity I described earlier and instead have a professional do it. My friend Mistress Elena (651-699-4949) studied waxing for years at Lefortovo Prison in the former USSR and you can bet your bottom ruble she knows a thing or two about it. In the privacy of her own studio and for an exorbitant amount of money she will cheerfully make your back, shoulders and tattoos smooth as a baby’s bottom:

“Okay, Hulles, your safe word is [some unpronounceable Russian word]. If you really want me to stop, just say that and I will. Otherwise we’ll just keep on until we’re done.”

“Wait, what was the – Ow!”

“Stop! Stop! I didn’t hear the – Yeow!”

Have you guessed yet that she knows Carmen? Paybacks are a bitch, and are best served at about 12 degrees Fahrenheit.

-- Hulles

1 I looked up “marquise” to make sure it was the feminine of “marquis” and ran across an Encarta article about a 1976 movie called “The Marquise of O.” Encarta told me that:

“When Russian troops capture the marquise (played by Edith Cleaver), the count (Bruno Ganz) frees her from them and saves her from rape. Later, she discovers she is pregnant, and that the count raped her while she was heavily drugged.”

Yikes! Sorry to give the plot away, but yikes! Or more appropriately, zut alors! It seems the film won the Cannes Grand Special Prix du Jury award that year.